From the Catholic-Muslim Forum

As a result of the A Common Word initiative, every three years a delegation of religious leaders and scholars from the Vatican and the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought gather for a seminar, The Catholic-Muslim Forum. October 2011 was the second seminar in the series (the first being held at the Vatican in 2008). The themes discussed were: Reason, Faith and the Human Person. Habib Ali’s paper ‘The Concept of Faith in Islam’ and Dr Ibrahim Kalin's paper ‘Reason and Rationality in the Qur’an’ are two papers from the forum.

The Concept of Faith in Islam

Author: Habib Ali al-Jifri
Languages: English and Arabic
Pages: 106 (56 in English and 50 Arabic)


Summary: Covers the building of the faithful soul according to the concepts of Islamic faith along with the signs of faith's increase and decrease and the real-life consequences on the individual, communal and global level. He also makes a lucid argument for the need of a faithful interaction with God as a precondition to having a healthy connection to all others around him.
Free PDF Downloads: are available here: English | Arabic.




Reason and Rationality in the Qur’an
Author: Dr Ibrahim Kalin
Languages: English, French, and Arabic
Pages: 212 (64 in English, 73 in French and 75 Arabic)
Summary: This paper argues that far from being a self-standing entity, reason functions within a larger context of meaning and existence, intelligibility, and moral thinking. Dr Kalin shows clearly how the Quranic perspective of rationality moves us beyond the internal workings of a single, disengaged mind and places us with a larger context of ontological significance.
Free PDF Downloads: are available here: English & French | Arabic.